


Return

by easmith32



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-09
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-28 22:39:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/997745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easmith32/pseuds/easmith32
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's return seen through others eyes</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in nearly 10 years. Please be gentle. All praise to my amazing sister for proofreading and sharing my obsession with all things Sherlock! You guys will have to tell me whether or not to continue.

RETURN

 

MYCROFT

THE DIOGENES CLUB

 

“Sir?” Mycroft Holmes looked curiously up at the footman standing before his chair. His hair was a trifle thinner, his waist a hair thicker, but the three years since his brother's disgrace and death had changed him little outwardly. “Yes?”  
“Sir, there's a vagrant outside insisting that we admit him.” The poor footman looked pained at this breach of propriety. “We threatened to call Scotland Yard, but he insists that you'll want to see him.” Mycroft sighed. Since Sherlock's death, Mycroft had adopted some of the saner elements of his brother's homeless network but most of them knew not to importune him at his club. “Very well. There's no need to bother the good offices of our constabulary. Admit him to the Stranger's Room and inform him that I'll join him shortly.” The footman nodded, relieved to have the problem taken from his hands. “Very good, sir. Should I order him some soup from the kitchens?” Mycroft's brow rose slightly at that. The vagrant must be a poor specimen indeed to solicit this reaction from the normally phlegmatic and staid staff of the Diogenes Club. He nodded and waved the footman away, gazing into the last of his brandy. No, there was no need to bother the Yard, he thought, remembering his last meeting with DI Lestrade and the black eye the man had given him. The only reason he hadn't gone about quietly destroying the man's career was because he'd honestly deserved the blow and he knew it. Sighing again, Mycroft rose from his chair. There was the chance that this vagrant had information regarding the latest in a string of worldwide murders that had been giving him headaches for the last six months. A businessman in Brussels, found poisoned in his flat. An embassy worker in New York, found stabbed in his office. A cabbie in London, found shot between the eyes. He'd attempted to reach out to John Watson about that one, but the man had made it perfectly clear that he wanted to be left alone with his new wife. If Mycroft recalled correctly, and he always recalled correctly, he could remember the exact wording of the obscenity laden diatribe he had received from the man with regards to his person and any attempt to insert said into the good doctor's life. And now this latest, a former British Army Colonel found almost literally torn to pieces in his hotel room in Edinburgh. Murders from Singapore to San Antonio to Switzerland with nothing to connect them except the M found scrawled on the wall above the bodies, sometimes in yellow spray paint, sometimes in ink, sometimes in their own blood. Forensics experts the world over had turned up nothing. It was as if they were killed by a ghost.  
As he entered the Stranger's Room, he was pleased to note that someone (the enterprising footman, most likely) had found a metal folding chair for their guest to sit on, thereby saving several priceless pieces of furniture from utter ruination. The creature before him was filthy beyond description, his badly dyed blonde hair matted and obviously crawling with vermin. He was clad in the remains of an old american army jacket over a blue oxford hoodie and jeans that could probably have stood very well on they're own, absent their owner. His face was hidden by the bowl he was currently in the process of draining, disdaining the napkin and spoon on the tray before him. Praying he wouldn't have to spend the next forty-five minutes listening to paranoid schizophrenic rantings about aliens working for the government, Mycroft seated himself and asked pleasantly, “And how may I be of service to you, my good man?”  
The bowl hit the tray-table in front of him with a thunk and a voice Mycroft hadn't expected to hear again this side of the grave rumbled out of the thin chested man before him.

“Is that really how you're going to greet a resurrected prodigal, brother dear?”

For the first time in a life of the most stringent control imaginable, Mycroft Holmes fainted. Sherlock, of course, never let him hear the end of it.


	2. Lestrade

DI Lestrade

 

“Sir?” Greg Lestrade looked curiously up from the never ending paperwork on his desk at the young officer in the doorway of his office and tried desperately to remember the lad's name. Smythe? Smithwyke? _Getting old, Lestrade. Losing what little memory and observational skill you did have._ His heart gave a small twist as it always did when he heard that voice in his head. He quickly glanced at the nametag on the boy's( _God, they keep getting younger)_ uniform shirt. “Yes, Stanson?”

“There's a man outside. He's insisting that we have the wrong man in lockup for the Shearson  case, sir. We told him to budge along, but he won't go.” Greg sighed. “Don't worry about it, Stanson. I'll come down and deal with it.” Another imitation Sherlock. They had been cropping up ever since the anonymous tip that had led Scotland Yard to a safety deposit box full of journals dating back years, detailing crimes too numerous to count. Final proof that Richard Brook and Jim Moriarty were the same man. They'd been averaging about one madman a month, all claiming Sherlock's powers of deduction, all failing miserably.The one two months ago had capped it. Greg had been forced to lock him up after he'd inadvertently revealed so much about the crime that it became clear even to Anderson that he was the killer.

Greg had never forgiven himself for not preventing the destruction of two of his best friends. After Sherlock's funeral, John Watson had coldly and clearly made it known that he felt Greg's defection and willingness to arrest Sherlock to be at least partially responsible. _Donovan and Anderson always hated him. You knew that and believed their vindictive bullshit anyway. Its your fault as much as anybody's that he's laying on that slab downstairs. I never want to see any of you again._ His words of three years ago still burned in Greg's mind. He had heard that John had married but hadn't seen hide nor hair of the man since that terrible day.

As he took the elevator down to the lobby to deal with this latest one, Greg mused at how much had changed in three years. Anderson had finally left his wife for Donovan, only to have her abandon him for some athlete from America. Dimmock was gone, shot in the shoulder and taken an early retirement. Greg was the last of the old guard who had known the real Sherlock Holmes instead of the tall tales fed to wide eyed rooks who only half believed. _I miss my friend._ Greg thought sadly as he strode into the lobby saying in a stern voice, “Alright, lad, lets have no more of this. The Yard has things well in hand with the Shearson case and you're disrupting things.” At least, that's what Greg started to say before he was interrupted with a scathing voice he'd never dared hope to hear again. “If any of these idiots has anything in their hands or their tiny little brains, I will be highly surprised, Detective Inspector.”

Greg spent the rest of his life denying to all and sundry that he had burst into tears and thrown his arms around Sherlock like a teenage girl.

Nobody believed him. There were too many witnesses.


End file.
